The state budget has a $1-billion-plus hole in it, and the Legislature's slush fund is a juicy target for helping to fill it.

The procrastinators in the Pennsylvania Legislature are at it again, this time with the pending audit of their operations.

Each year, they have an auditor come in to check on whether the legislature's budget — roughly $300 million last year — was spent properly.

Auditors also tell the public how big a pile of discretionary cash lawmakers have stashed away in case they have some urgent political need to spend it. Until recently, that slush fund had totaled at least $180 million. That's enough to fund seven months of the Legislature's so-called "work" if it gets into a protracted budget fight with the governor, which is the main rationale for hording the money.

The most recent report, covering 2011-12, showed that legislators were a little less greedy, carrying over $141 million.

The audit of the Legislature often brings bad publicity to a body that would prefer to avoid it. If there are dubious expenses – like spending on alcohol or perks — the audit flags them. And telling the public the size of the Legislature's slush fund doesn't exactly produce a statewide surge of warm fuzzies toward those who are already scarfing down $300 million worth of taxpayer money.

Nonetheless, when the Legislature is trying especially hard to look good to the public — as in the aftermath of the notorious 2005 midnight pay raise — the audit would typically come out by December, six months after fiscal books were closed. The public would have the results right as legislators returned to work in January.

But as anger at the midnight pay raise has faded, the Legislature has been in no hurry to roll out the results of that yearly audit. Here we are at May, and we're still waiting for the report on its spending, the last dime of which occurred 11 months ago.

It's true the delay could stem in part from unexpected turnover in the leadership of the committee that oversees the audit.

It's also true the state budget has a $1-billion-plus hole in it, and the Legislature's slush fund is a juicy target for helping to fill it. The less the public knows about that stash of money, the less pressure there is to put it to better use.

House Republican spokesman Steve Miskin has said that even without a final audit, legislators generally have a good idea of how much money is in the pot they horde for themselves from the previous year.

The public might get to see more timely audits if legislators themselves didn't have so much control over the process. Audits of the Legislature really should be handled through an entity with some autonomy, like the Independent Fiscal Office.

The Legislature's foot-dragging with the annual audit is another example of how those in charge of Pennsylvania's government seem to run it for their own political convenience. It helps explain why, in public esteem, Pennsylvania's Legislature is down there somewhere in the neighborhood of used car salesmen and racist NBA codger Donald Sterling.